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5398 results in Wits University Press

Page 172 of 270

  • 24 - Being an immigrant and facing uncertainty in Johannesburg: The case of Somalis

  • from Section C - Spatial identities
    • By Samadia Sadouni, associate professor of political science at Sciences Po Lyon in France
  • Edited by Philip Harrison, Graeme Götz, Alison Todes, Chris Wray
  • Book:
    Changing Space, Changing City
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp 481-486

  • Summary

    In this chapter I discuss the influence of urban setting and spatiality on various aspects of Somali identity (social, economic and religious). I describe different categories of Somali immigrants, who continue to face levels of uncertainty and risk in their new host country and particularly in the city-region of Johannesburg. The categories described relate to immigrant status, gender, class and religious identity, and I show how these are important in the stratification of the Somali population living and working in the suburb of Mayfair in Johannesburg. In particular, I look at how intermingling notions of class and immigrant status have contribtued to structuring the economic spatiality that Somali entrepreneurs have formed through a nexus of links between the city of Johannesburg and townships in the Gauteng region.

    My-gration, your-gration: who are the Somalis in Johannesburg?

    In the field of transnationalism Somali migrants constitute what we call a diaspora – a diaspora whose members have through transnational mobility created a Somali diasporic space on different continents. The diasporic mobility of Somalis is not new, especially for sailors employed in sea ports of the British Empire (Hyslop 2009). As a result, small Somali communities – especially Isaq communities – can be found in port cities as far apart as Perth and New York (Lewis 1961). By the end of the nineteenth century, the biggest Somali presence outside Africa was settled in England along the Welsh coast: these were the seamen of the British Merchant Navy. During the 1930s, Somali leaders in Britain served as political intermediaries for Kenyan Somalis, who tried to negotiate with the Colonial Office in London about uplifting their racial status in Kenya (Turton 1972). There are a number of cases of Somali transnationalism in Africa and elsewhere during imperial and colonial times, as well as after the Second World War. Somalis travelled into southern African countries such as Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to work as miners; they were also present in Yemen and the Gulf states after Somalia's independence, where they were able to organise trans-Indian Ocean business.

    Therefore, it is no surprise to observe a stratification of identities among Somalis in post-apartheid South Africa along specific transnational experiences and journeys.

  • Conclusion

  • Andrew Manson, Bernard Mbenga
  • Book:
    Land, Chiefs, Mining
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp 170-175

  • Summary

    From the imposition of white rule in the 1840s to the beginning of the new millennium, the African people in the North West Province experienced dramatic changes. Some of these would be readily apparent just from an observation of the regional environment. Apart from the obvious and conspicuous footprints of economic and social transformation (roads, railways, bridges, mission stations, churches, urban housing and telecommunications) one can note further features. First, the black population was forced to reside in reserves set aside for them, or on privately acquired ‘tribal’ farms, and many still live here or have a foot in these areas. The reserves, although still home to thousands of people, are for the most part barren and barely offer the chance of accumulation on any significant scale. Second, large tracts of land, mostly in the ‘maize triangle’ of the old western Transvaal, are still concentrated in the hands of commercial farmers. Third, the earth is scarred by the imprint of numerous mines, and the rivers and air polluted as a consequence. Finally, the region's wildlife has been herded into game parks, now a source of considerable profit. This book records and analyses a number of the key moments and developments in the human history of the North West Province.

    During and following the so-called difaqane, a number of opportunistic, determined and well connected young men brought together the remnants of ethnically affiliated people and independent groups and began to reoccupy land in the bushveld and the thornveld area south of the Molopo River. To do so they had to negotiate with the unpredictable trekboers establishing themselves from the late 1830s around the available water sources of the region. This required astute leadership skills and the ability to negotiate on equal terms with the white authorities. These skills were exemplified by Moiloa of the baHurutshe. Historians have resorted to the frequent use of the terms ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’ to describe the reaction of African societies to colonial rule. While these terms still have relevance, the response to colonial rule of Africans such as Moiloa and all the significant nineteenth century baTswana leaders defy neat compartmentalisation into collaborators or resisters – there are many subtleties and ambiguities within and between these rather stark contrasts.

  • Conclusion

  • Gabeba Baderoon
  • Book:
    Regarding Muslims
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp 153-160

  • Summary

    The whole is always the untrue.

    – Theodor Adorno, quoted in Hussein (2002: 233)

    The photographs of Pagad on the front pages of South African newspapers in August 1996 created a shock of recognition by overturning the picturesque mode of representing Muslims and reviving the nineteenth century image of the “fanatical” Oriental running “amok”. Images of Pagad articulated both a new and an old vision of Muslims and intersected with an international idiom focused on militancy and alienation. It was this oscillation between the placid and the fanatical that prompted the writing of Regarding Muslims.

    In this book, I have explored the long fascination with images of Muslims in South Africa. I have argued that the figure of the picturesque Muslim evokes not only what is to be remembered, but what to be forgotten – in fact, reliance on the picturesque or “kitsch” portrayal of Muslims, involving sentimental and reassuring tropes, requires the forgetting of certain histories.

    This is manifested in a fascination with picturesque Muslim figures, at the same time that the violence of slavery has been erased, signs of which remain in popular culture in images that allude obliquely to slavery. I have argued that the charged play of visibility and invisibility in these images of Muslims in the popular realm holds a revealing diagnostic power.

    Toni Morrison showed that the weighted tone of black characters in white American literature signalled subsumed meanings of race in the US, in which “black people ignite critical moments of discovery, change or emphasis in literature not written by them” (1992: viii). Similarly, I have taken a lesson from the recurring image of the picturesque Muslim in popular culture and argue that this offers a diagnostic tool for eliciting a part of history that has disappeared – but not disappeared. The anxiety of remembering slavery is refracted in popular culture through a focus on festivity, beauty, submissiveness and placid religious observance. Where Morrison identified a “pervasive use of black images” in literature that contemplates the meaning of freedom and individuality in a context of systemic violence and enslavement (1992: x), I find that the most compelling themes in the South African instances I have analysed are belonging and indigeneity. “Visibility” in the picturesque mode literally makes Muslims disappear – but reappear as reassuring objects that allay the anxiety of belonging for the colonial gaze.

  • 29 - Phantoms of the past, spectres of the present: Chinese space in Johannesburg

  • from Section C - Spatial identities
    • By Philip Harrison, South African Research Chair in Development Planning and Modelling at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and a member of the National Planning Commission and other advisory structures to government, Khangelani Moyo, researcher in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and a GCSRI-Carnegie PhD fellow, Yan Yang, consultant for the South African Cities Network
  • Edited by Philip Harrison, Graeme Götz, Alison Todes, Chris Wray
  • Book:
    Changing Space, Changing City
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp 512-526

  • Summary

    Respect ghosts and gods but keep them at a distance.

    – The Analects of Confucius, 6.20

    Phantoms lie about the past whilst spectres gesture towards a still unformulated future.

    – Colin Davis, 2005

    Spectrality does not involve the conviction that ghosts exist or that the past (and maybe even the future they offer to prophesy) is still very much alive and at work, within the living present: all it says, if it can be thought to speak, is that the living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us.

    – Frederic Jameson, 1999

    Phantom spaces

    In the seventh lunar month of the Chinese calendar the gates of hell are opened and ghosts are released to roam the world. Those who died a wrongful death – Diao Sǐ Guǐ – or those who passed away far from home – Gū Hún Yě Guǐ – are oft en restless and vengeful, seeking recompense. It is a dangerous month to be out and about in Johannesburg for nearly 3 200 Chinese mine workers died on the Witwatersrand in the short period between 1904 and 1910. Faced with primitive conditions in the mines and prison-like conditions in the compounds in which they were housed, the lives of mine workers were ended by ‘execution, disease, opium overdoses, accidents, homicide and suicide’ (MacLellan 2008: 78). The dying suffered the terrible loneliness of being 7 000 miles away from home.

    Around 63 000 Chinese were brought from the northern provinces of Henan and Shandong after the South African War to work on the gold mines as indentured labour. It was a move that restored production to the mines that had been closed during the war but provoked near hysteria among Johannesburg's white citizens and helped bring down Lord Arthur Balfour's government in the United Kingdom. By 1910 all the surviving Chinese workers had been repatriated except for the handful that had absconded and avoided capture (Kynoch 2005).

  • Chapter 9 - ‘Stray Boys’: The Kruger National Park and Migrant Labour

    • By Jacob Dlamini, Researcher at the University of Barcelona in Spain. He is the author of Native Nostalgia.
  • Edited by Peter Delius, Laura Phillips, Fiona Rankin-Smith
  • Book:
    A Long Way Home
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp 132-143

  • Summary

    Sometime in September 1920, an unnamed African from Mozambique was killed and his corpse eaten by hyenas inside the Sabi Game Reserve. According to the findings of a government investigation launched by CL Harries, the Sub-Native Commissioner for Sibasa, the African was part of a group of labour recruits travelling from a place called Mpafula on the Portuguese side of the border to Punda Maria, in the northern section of the reserve. The group, which included the man's son, was led by Mafuta Sitoye and Longone Makuleke, ‘native runners’ for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association. Popularly known as Wenela, the association was a labour recruitment agency founded in 1900 by the Chamber of Mines to help the mining industry meet its needs. The runners’ job was to accompany recruits from the Portuguese territory through the reserve to a pickup point in the northern section of the sanctuary, from where the workers would be sent by donkey wagons, trucks and trains to mines in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Every member of the September 1920 group, except the unnamed man, was a contracted recruit, meaning each had signed a contract to work on the mines for at least 18 months. The man had decided to travel with the group in order to visit friends on the South African side of the border. However, while the group was walking through the reserve, he fell ill. His son was ordered by the runners to stay and look after him. Father and son slept in the bush, but the next day, the runners came back and ordered the son to leave his father behind and proceed with them to Punda Maria, as he had contractual obligations to meet. The son duly left his father and moved on to Punda Maria. Meanwhile, the father was abandoned for ten days and ‘left to suffer and await death at the spot where he first took ill’. The two runners passed him often during those ten days as they ferried recruits back and forth through the reserve.

  • Preface to the Fourth Edition

  • C. M. Doke, Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, D. M. Malcolm, Mzilikazi Khumalo
  • Book:
    English-isiZulu / isiZulu-English Dictionary
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp vii-vii

  • Summary

    ORTHOGRAPHY

    A newly revised isiZulu orthography has been introduced in this Fourth Edition in line with the approved PanSALB (2008) orthography.

  • b has given way to bh when used at the beginning of a syllable, but remains as b when it appears in a cluster. Examples are ibhokisi, umbhali, imbeleko and izimbali.

  • 6 has now given way to b.

  • The phonetic symbol for c is now indicated as [/], rather than Doke's [sk].

  • The phonetic symbol for q is now [!], no longer Doke's [ck].

  • The phonetic symbol for x is now [//]. No longer the Dokean [bk].

  • Dokes’ hh is now used in the new orthography. Examples are ihhashi and ihhotela.

  • The hyphen that separated the parts of speech forming a compound in isiZulu has been removed. Examples are ububhaxa-bhaxa > ububhaxabhaxa; umqoqi-zitembu > umqoqizitembu and ubucwazi-cwazi > ubucwazicwazi.

  • Vowels that were following each other have now been separated by a hyphen. An example is wase Afrika > wase-Afrika.

  • Capital letters, especially for days of the week and names of regiments, have been corrected, for example umsombuluko > uMsombuluko; imBokodwebomvu > iMbokodwebomvu.

  • Demonstrative pronouns and the nouns have been separated. For example, lomuntu is now lo muntu, lesisithombe is now lesi sithombe. Where these were separated by a hyphen, the hyphen has now been removed.

  • Some words that are not politically correct have been removed or corrected. For example, Amakula abhansela bonke abathenga kuwo > AmaNdiya abhansela bonke abathenga kuwo; Kaffircorn porridge (idokwe lamabele) > corn porridge (idokwe lamabele).

  • 22 - Transformation through transportation: Some early impacts of Bus Rapid Transit in Orlando, Soweto

  • from Section B - Area-based transformations
    • By Christo Venter, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Eunice Vaz, town and regional planner with Aurecon (Pty) Ltd in Maputo, Mozambique
  • Edited by Philip Harrison, Graeme Götz, Alison Todes, Chris Wray
  • Book:
    Changing Space, Changing City
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2014, pp 443-453

  • Summary

    In August 2009 Johannesburg became the first city in Africa to implement a full Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system named Rea Vaya (or ‘we are going’). Largely based on the South American model, which includes exclusive bus lanes, enclosed bus stations and high service quality, the first 26 km-long trunk line connects eastern Soweto with the CBD, while feeder buses extend its reach into other parts of Soweto. Simultaneous with the construction of the bus corridor, the City of Johannesburg has been upgrading bus station precincts, including landscaping public spaces and redeveloping buildings (CoJ 2009).

    Rea Vaya can thus be read as another instalment of the City of Johannesburg's efforts to transform Soweto through a combination of infrastructure and policy interventions (as described in more detail in Chapter 15). But Rea Vaya is also more than this: through the incremental roll-out of further bus corridors across the city, the intention is to provide a network of metropolitan public transport that ‘improve[s] access and reduce[s] travelling time for residents to employment, education, recreation and markets’ (CoJ 2010: 241). The BRT is intended both as a sustainable transport option, capable of attracting car users and reducing congestion, and as an affordable option for low-income users. This dual mandate makes BRT a potentially important tool in the transformation of space in post-apartheid Johannesburg.

    In this chapter we ask how successful BRT has been in achieving its second mandate, namely leveraging economic advancement for the poor. If BRT is to be instrumental in achieving social objectives in Johannesburg in years to come, the question is worth asking even at this early stage. The success of the Rea Vaya experiment is, however, also relevant in the context of national policy, as BRT has become an important element of the South African government's efforts to transform cities through spatial integration and provide ‘equitable basic access for all citizens’ (DoT 2007: 3). BRT systems are operational or under construction in at least four other South African metropolitan areas. Early lessons from the Rea Vaya experience could be valuable in assessing and perhaps adjusting the trajectories of these developments.

    By many measures Rea Vaya can be considered a success: passenger numbers have steadily increased, new services have gradually been added and the taxi industry seems to be co-operating and participating in the transformation of public transport.

Page 172 of 270